The Medical Advancement That Just Changed Nine Womens' Lives

Yesterday, a team of Swedish doctors announced that they'd given nine women successful womb transplants, and that the women hoped to get pregnant with their new body parts soon. If fertility and medical news aren't really your jam and you don't understand why that's CRAZY (in the most amazing and science-is-awesome way) let me break down the reasons why it is.

#1: THE SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

Before the news broke, there had only been two successful cases of womb transplants in the world, one in Turkey, one in Saudi Arabia. So the fact that this Swedish team was able to pull off no fewer than nine womb transplants is huge. As one of the doctors, Dr. Mats Brannstrom, said, they legitimately had "no textbook to look at" when doing the operations. (Just what every patient loves to hear?) Now, with nine victory notches in their post, they're making it look easy.

#2: THE BACK STORY AND THE IMPLICATIONS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE

One of the main reasons uterus transplants are so unexplored is because they're risky to the donor, and many doctors don't want to put a donor in danger if it's not solving a life-threatening issue on the other end. Which, in this case, it's not: All the women in the Swedish project were either born without uteruses (which happens in roughly 1 in 4,500 women) or had them removed due to cervical cancer. So these women could've gone on living life as it was; they just wouldn't be able to have biological children. Instead, their female family members jeopardized their own health so that these womb-less women could do this procedure. It says a lot about what women will do to give other women the opportunity to have biological children. Or what they'll do to advance medicine. Or both.

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#3: THE DOORS IT OPENS

If these pregnancies work—if even just one of them works—it could pave the way for more doctors to start practicing these methods, too. And that might completely change the fertility game for women who really, really want biological children but can't have them. That's pretty incredible, isn't it? Especially in countries where surrogacy is illegal, like France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and Italy. Women without uteruses in those countries have no way to have a biological child. But soon, at the rate things are going, they might.